On the most extreme use of force – officer-involved shootings – we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account. We argue that the patterns in the data are consistent with a model in which police officers are utility maximizers, a fraction of which have a preference for discrimination, who incur relatively high expected costs of officer-involved shootings.

– Roland G. Fryer J. An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force. Journal of Political Economy. Forthcoming.

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